Satan on six legs

The prowling embodiment of Beelzebub, the Devil's coach horse beetle could absolve you of all your sins, says Ian Morton

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HAVE you committed a sin recently? If so, go out and commit six more. Then, find a particular black beetle and crush it. You will be forgiven all seven sins, for you are in medieval England and you have killed the beetle because it deserved to die. You know this because its ancestor is said to have committed contemptuous sacrilege by eating the core of the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had partaken thereof. Hence its destruction makes you a demonstrably upstanding Christian who has achieved absolution—for the time being, at least.

Folklore may have fortified the wicked, but it was tough on this little creature. The Middle Ages reeled back from the chunky black insect an inch or so long, with strong jaws and an abdomen that would curve upwards, scorpion-like, when it was threatened. Although it carried no sting, two glands emitted a foul odour and its reputation was as black as its body parts.